Checking into psychiatric hospital and coming out stronger

I was commentating on the Giro d’Italia last year and I just had this anxiety all of a sudden. I left the race after the four days I was booked to commentate. I was fatigued and slept all day. Even if I set an alarm, I couldn’t get up. Excuse the pun but that was a wakeup call for me. I knew I had to contact the hospital and check myself in. It was a big step for me to admit that I was not mentally healthy. I had a couple of months in the psychiatric hospital getting medicated.

If I’m honest with you, I knew this was coming but I wasn’t prepared for it. As a professional bike rider, you have to be emotionless, so I didn’t have time during my career to deal with my issues.

During your career, you have to focus on the next race. You’re in the cycling bubble that you don’t notice what’s going on around you. In the first year of my retirement, I tried to deal with my depression on my own but that didn’t go so well so I talked to my family to help me.

The big issue for me was who am I now that I’m not a professional cyclist anymore?

I had an identity crisis.

When you’re a pro, you’re in the newspaper and on TV, journalists are calling you all the time. When you retire, that all stops.

You feel like you’re not relevant anymore.

I hit that black hole that I know a lot of riders experience after their careers. I chose to speak out about it and did a big article in the media in Denmark. I wanted to address the taboo about being depressed. [Tweet this by clicking here]

It’s funny that the biggest depression episode happened when I was commentating on the Giro. I have a love/hate relationship with the race. It’s a race I’m passionate about. During my career, I had so many ups and downs there.

In 2011 I was riding for HTC – High Road and we were in Milano on the last day for the time trial. I was starting two minutes behind Michael Mørkøv. He was going full gas. I managed to catch him. He had Bjarne Riis and Alberto Contador in the car behind him. Bjarne has a special place in my heart. We’re good friends. He was screaming go go go as I was passing his rider.

I was on the way to win the stage. Then, as I went by Michael, I went over a tram line.

Flat tyre!

There was no time to do a wheel change because it was 1.5km to the finish. David Millar beat me by 7 seconds. It was a technical finish in Milan at the cathedral. I probably lost 30 – 40 seconds in that 1.5km. That would have been my biggest pro win on the road.

The way I dealt with it was thinking about Millar’s chain coming off a few years before in the Giro when he was probably on the way to winning. These things happen a lot in cycling. It’s a part of the sport you have to learn to deal with. Everything works out eventually. You have to accept it at the time.

I have another Giro story from that year. I was teammates with Cav. We were in a stage where we finished up Mt Etna. We had to go up it twice. There were 10 – 20 of us and we were dropped 100km from the finish. We suffered all day to make the time limit. It was only after my first World Championships on the track I started to realise that I could be a pro on the road. I didn’t believe before that that I could be a pro. My body type is not that of a natural road sprinter. I’m more of a track sprinter. The road took so much more effort so days like these were the hardest for me.

We were on the crisp of getting eliminated and had to work together. We beat the cut-off by 20 seconds. We sat at the top of the mounting thinking, how did we just make that. That was quite an experience.

Finishing that Giro, actually finishing all the Grand Tours I did means more to me than the victories. There was so much suffering. That’s something I will always look back at with pride. No one expected me to finish three Grand Tours. I wanted to finish them no matter the cost.

Sometimes I feel sprinters don’t get enough recognition for how they can suffer in races.

Of course, they are a special breed of people as well. It’s almost like you have to be a bit of a d*ick to some guys while you’re still racing. You can’t be anyone’s best friend in the peloton because you will never win anything if you’re the nice guy in the peloton. But the funny thing is after your career you become good friends. Sprinters have a tendency to hate each other on the bike but you share a similar passion and take the same kind of risks. It’s only after you retire that you get more insight into who you are as a person.

We always become good friends after our career. Cavendish, Henderson, Tyler Farrar, Kristoff, I used to go up against these guys and we became friends afterwards.

Another memory I will hold onto from my career is the first World Championships in Los Angeles in 2005. That was very special for me to become world champion there. My dad went to the Olympics in Los Angeles when I was a young boy and I’ve loved the track since I was six years old.

I won in Copenhagen in 2010 in front of my home crowd. That is something I’ll remember forever. The Olympics was unique, to be in the final there against the GB team was special.

After I checked myself into the hospital, I had a year where I was totally out of the sport. I didn’t follow cycling at all and needed to step away from the sport. I needed to figure out if I wanted to be part of the sport. The break was good for me. Before that, I would watch races and think, “I can still beat these young guys.” It’s like I couldn’t let it go.

But with the break, I realised that I’m pretty passionate about the sport – especially track cycling. I found my love for the sport again in a different way and want to develop young talent instead of being jealous. I’m glad to have had the experiences I did because I hope it means I can help the younger guys now and prepare them for the good and bad days.